The man who fatally stabbed dairy worker Janak Patel has been jailed for at least 15 years at the High Court in Auckland this morning.<\/p>\n
Patel\u2019s death sparked nationwide protests from dairy and small business employees, calling for better protections and harsher penalties for criminals.<\/p>\n
Frederick Hobson murdered Janak Patel after robbing the Rose Cottage Superette in Auckland\u2019s Sandringham in November 2022.<\/p>\n
He pleaded guilty to a charge of murder and aggravated robbery and has been sentenced to life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 15 years.<\/p>\n
Patel was looking after the dairy for the owners who were overseas at the time of his killing.<\/p>\n
He had recently moved to New Zealand from the UK to be with his wife and had plans to launch an importing and exporting business.<\/p>\n
The court heard he was stabbed to death \u201cfor a few dollars\u201d after chasing Hobson, who had stolen the cash register, down the street.<\/p>\n
Patel confronted Hobson with a hockey stick before he was stabbed at least six times.<\/p>\n
Hobson then fled, and Patel died a short time later.<\/p>\n
Hobson\u2019s accomplice, Shane Tane, who was a lookout on the day of the robbery and admitted a charge of aggravated robbery, was also sentenced to four and a half years.<\/p>\n
Proceedings against a third man, Henry Fred, who was allegedly the getaway driver, were \u201cstayed\u201d because of a terminal illness, meaning he won\u2019t be tried.<\/p>\n
Several victim impact statements were read out in court this morning, including one from Janak\u2019s sister Nilam.<\/p>\n
The statement was read on her behalf by Crown prosecutor Alysha McClintock.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of my greatest supports is now missing from my life,\u201d the statement read. \u201cI must continue to confront my fear every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
A letter of apology from Hobson was also read by his lawyer David Young.<\/p>\n
\u201cI utterly apologise for my despicable behaviour\u201d, the court heard. \u201cI admit I am a coward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source: 1 news<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The man who fatally stabbed dairy worker Janak Patel has been jailed for at least 15 years at the High Court in Auckland this morning. Patel\u2019s death sparked nationwide protests from dairy and small business employees, calling for better protections and harsher penalties for criminals. Frederick Hobson murdered Janak Patel after robbing the Rose Cottage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10499,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10497\/revisions\/10499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}